I'm going to keep this brief as I'm currently standing (sitting) in a half gallon of NYC's vaunted public water, borrowing as I am from an old Army trick for breaking in jump boots.
Yes, I stood in the shower with new leather boots on. Not jump boots.
And now I'm reliving the punchline to the old Army trick: I get to wear them, my feet soggy, sopping, until the shrink and fit is molded perfectly to my feet. Apparently the method involves keeping them on throughout a full day. Thus, forgive what I write here.
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Exhibit 1. Having now finished the Krasznahorkai, and being completely lost as to what my next literary expedition should be, I turned to the place where all discerning readers go: Youtube.
I am writing this with a bit of a cough, so please excuse this and my relative lack of coherence, if it happens. A three-dots post:
One. With the death of Patrice O'Neal, I'm remembering my only story involving the guy. (Great comedian, btw, in the few places I saw him -- he was the flamer on Arrested Development, although I remember him as a regular on the earliest iteration of Politically Incorrect and Comedy Central Roasts.
1. Crazy girls gone wilder. [Ed. note: The writer of this blog does not condone the exploitation of the mentally disaffected, nor should they be used in a suggested reboot of a once-ballyhooed reality series "Survivor: Lizzie Borden All-Stars."]
2. Scare people with your tool today. [Ed. note: The assumption and accusation that he in any way resembles Michael Myers or O.J. Simpson or Freddie Kreuger or Leatherface, et al., is a complete fabrication and should respectfully be struck wholely and completely from the public record.]
3. She will surely pounce on you. [Ed. note: The writer loves letters from the SPCA, owing to the warm fuzzy he receives from the usually included photo kittens: one tuxedo and one russian blue.]
4. Singer-Songwriter Competition, Win Your Transaction and More. [Ed. note: This was immediately deleted due to the likelihood that the content would be of an adult nature.]
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My first lost post. I had started it around Labor Day, today I let it go. Read it, but understand it's not complete.
The theme: Aspirations.
The setting: The Berkshires, Labor Day weekend.
Where I lost it: the aspiration to not exist.
Is it safe for work?: Yes.
Tangent: In which the writer tries to draw a parallel between the works of Sol LeWitt and John Cage. The term aleatoric is mentioned (quite a bit). The loss of identity, the abnegation of identity, the hubris brought about by the fact the artist might have touched or otherwise been involved with the piece of art is questioned - and those particular concepts of identity, post-human and post-artist - are brought up. The idea that post-art - as wrought by conceptual art - is the world of design (which we're in) and marketing campaigns (which we're also in) is also broached. The notion that these are wrong for the ongoing continuation of the human species is included. That we abnegate, allow others to make our sense of taste; that we deny the glory of ugh anger love beauty. That's in the piece. That we're in the new Dark Ages. Not as much (but it's hinted at oh so slightly).
Summary: Geof is an abnegation; we are in the dark ages; go fetch your zombie hat before you die. And Cormac McCarthy was right.
Or something like that.
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Did I mention I saw Drive last week? So exciting. Although to be fair and granted, the film had its problems all up and down the map (map read as the Character of Ryan Gosling's the driver), but as a noir flick it was immaculately shot and needs to be seen on a big screen. When given a full character, the performances were tight.
[Ed. note: This will be the ultimately unfinished start to a failed post, ruminations on the now long-done Labor Day weekend trip that spared me the shootings that hit my neighborhood (and which surprised no one).]
I.
It was upon the fourth or fifth passing of a car dealership that I turned to my navigator-cum-lady-companion and said "This is what America looks like." We were driving along Route 9, towards MassMoCA from the city of Great Barrington, Mass., and the two lanes running alongside were empty, people vacating for the Labor Day weekend. We drove through the trench between two lines of the cloud-covered Berkshires. Unmowed grass on flanked us on either side. Breaking the ranks of the untamed ground were said dealerships. Breaking the ranks of homeless autos, a gas station or turnoff diner. Breaking the ranks of those were the occasional stagnant creek or still runoff lake. And breaking the sight of that was more asphalt and road.
We were listening to Mogwai, a dreary ruminative track most suited for the dreary overcast sky. It was 80 degrees, it was muggy. It had been raining intermittently, and were it not for the mountains I could have been back in Maryland. Even with the mountains it had that same lost rundown feel. Maybe it was more like Pennsylvania.
II.
That Tuesday, I told a coworker and UMass alum that I had been to the Berkshires for long weekend. He asked "Which Berkshires?", a concept alluding to the stark discrepancy between haves and nots: the summer holidayers from parts richer who forgot that the summer eventually has an end (New York, Boston, or any place where there is a fortune to be made), and the leftovers from when there used to be a vibrant industry, manufacturing, etc., at least judging from the factory shells that still dot the area.
The level of poverty is below that of the rest of the state (9.5% versus 10.1% statewide), but with its primary industry being tourism, it's easy to see how this divide can take place. For simplicity's sake, I will define the two groups as the Nose-uppers versus the Nose-downers. If I refer to them again.
III.
I've always held a belief in that you can tell a great deal about an area by the types of car-dealerships they have. Especially as the symbol of American-ness-writ-large in the latter half of the century, the car at once embodies a certain momentary status as well as the general aspirational zeal of its owner. And make no mistake, we saw our fair share of BMWs and Benzes and Cadillac dealerships, especially focused around the hubs of Great Barrington and Pittsfield. As the region denigrated to something more rural, these were supplanted by Chevrolet and Hyundais. makes both less lofty in ambition and strictly utilitarian, dependable, the vessels of mere survival.
The stores changed as well, from boutique outdoor-goods vendors to Dicks Sporting Goods to Marshall's. Predictably, the cars in the respective parking lots carried forth with these distinctions.
IV.
The houses were the type of blue and fading that tend to procreate in old mill towns, Victorian with white picketed porches and a crowning steeple, conical and wooden thatched. These were the type of houses that one would see in a magazine and would assume would be out of place. Due to the homogeneity, they defined the location they were in, and they articulated the probable ambitions of the original homeowners.
As we drove through North Adams these leered separated from the highway road, the road opened up to a webwork of downtown; with a light we were at the brick behemoth of the museum.
V.
What is the level of irony when your trip, to two unaffiliated museums is bookended by a pair of installations from the same artist? The artist in question: Sol LeWitt. The other museum: Dia:Beacon.
At Beacon the exhibit was line art, with geometric patterns being forced into 9x9 boxes to form a penciled-in texture. On a wall, in a room, with only a small white frame of unmarked paint and the light streaming in from skylights, they were weblike and claustrophobic.
At MassMoCA, they more dimension-plays, in the type of shocking hues that is a prescription for the color-blind.
At both places, they were missing the artist. In some ways, this was the goal of an era.
And what if it did start with a song? What if the Earthquakes, hurricanes, the incoming pandemonium portending an eventual apocalypse portending what, what, what exactly? What is it if it's not a feeling of comity through shared victimhood over the sacrosanct power of Nature over all? Or God's creatures and dangling shits, the skyscrapers as subtle re-envisionings of the Towers of Babel we line our fair fine fluid city with?
In shortform, those are the facts. And they bring us up to date for the litany of disasters here within.
I'm writing tonight, so forgive anything that might happen, as this is happenstance from calling out (again) from work and essentially fearing to co-exist. I will also warn you, I'm sitting around, snipping my rollies and marveling at the shapes that I can make with the smoke.
Basically, be ready for the "Notes from the Field" post that this is:
Rick Perry. A blast. I mean, can the guy be more of a caricature of all the things men do to try to convince people they're not gay? (Granted, that also works for Mitt Romney.) I will not be voting for him - either of them - should they get elected. But fuck. Perry couldn't be any gayer were he to walk around with an electrified butt plug and pink-feather in his cowboy hat. I think he would. Maybe he does.
Why do we still pretend that 'summer reading' is actual reading? I mean make no mistake, reading is itself a decadent act. But the idea that I read some shlocky bullshit regarding times of strife or crime or endearment (oh, why can't you love me?!) and that means I read, period, is junk. Reading is decadent. It's not for betterment, it's just junk and anger and really not a lot of time spent doing something else. Summer readers would be better served by drinking. Because that's what the reader is probably best served by doing. At least then it's actually decadence
I've become enamored by kitchen comedies. Whites. Kitchen Confidential, in particular. With what I do I liken it to a kitchen. Customers produce the ingredients, we try to shape it into a palate-able dish, and we do so in ten minutes per malleable ingredient. This would probably be a good idea for a pop-up. I know it's been done with drinks.
And finally, because you're bored and we all want it (and I needed to make this unsafe for work somehow):
The thermometer cracked today at 92 degrees. Which in common parlance means that the air outside was thick, like being suffocated under a down comforter while a fire rages on the floor below [Ed. aside: in my earlier times, I would rather naively assert that the masses would assert their distaste for global warming through pursed, smiling lips, en route to sand-draped shores and ocean breezes.]
In other words, with all heat, dry or otherwise, the air becomes murky. Adjunctly, bugs like murky, but in this heat, can they survive it? While walking out to get toilet paper, I saw this at my doorstep:
Yes, that's a dead butterfly. Yes, it means some form of curse or another, meaning that yes, I have inspired the wrath of Satan or a tengu, does it mean anything else? I inquire.
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I have two main problems with living on graveyard:
1) Meeting up with people. I've been playing phone tag with a friend of mine the last few days, attempting reconnect with old friends from SF. Generally, this results in my getting together before work. Generally, this also means an abbreviated meeting and/or the second problem:
2) Brunch. As somebody who takes great joy in the new, especially in forms decadent, As is well known in culinary circles, brunch is the castoff meal where all manners of largely dull, unsophisticated palates mingle together with their children, their parents, their large gaggle of friends and lord over angrily and in the throes of hangover their servings of mimosas and variations ova. In other words, it's passionless, largely as a means of survival.
And if it's one thing this largely inconsequential writer can't stand, it's the passionless.
In some ways, this summer might represent Young Orpheus's descent to the Pied-Piper of Hell. Who wants to help me edit my resume?
As usual, David Denby nails it. Excuse me: Denby. Nails. It.
So cut to the scene, Friend Daniel and I outside the Sunshine Cinema, me with requisite twig, Daniel having just emerged from el bano. After watching The Tree of Life.
Me: Just go with me on this one. I need to say the words, and then either back down or back them up. But I need to test the words out.
Daniel: And we haven't talked about the film yet, but those words are?
Me: That was the most infuriating film I've ever seen.
Now, the Denby interview happens on Charlie Rose, talking about the summer films either out or previewed in some capacity. And he's on a panel with A.O. Scott and the always foxy Dana Stevens. The clip:
The thing that killed me about the film was it's near-perfectness of the middle section. Talking with Friend Sarah afterwards, it was a new Raw. It was a new way of conveying Emotion, Life, the Ineffable. The middle section, for all its faults (and there were a spare few), it was about as perfect as you could get in filmmaking. Unfortunately, tacked around it was a probably well-placed Job quote, an IMAX nature film, and Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
I resolved that night that I need to own this film. That at least says something.
Item 2.
Mr. Abrams. Give it up. You're a hack. I completely get the fact that you provided that niche so sorely pining for Wachowski-sibling ruminations, but cereal-box philosophy is not your thing. You're a melodramatist. It involves a certain loss of complexity and depth, but I'm sure you'll understand when we say you're just not cut out for anything intellectually deeper than a wading pool filled with Kierkegaard. The cereal box was veneer, anyway.
I should retrace. I never saw Lost, save for a few episodes. I have watched Fringe, and do enjoy it but it's always seemed somewhat off. As for his other stuff: Alias and Felicity and Cloverdale and Undercover something -- Great, I think. Not really familiar with most of it, although the few bits I've seen have done nothing but make me realize that certain people trade on their ability to get more attractive people around them.
But wait, I forgot to mention this little beast:
I should be fair. He was only the writer, and it was an early script. But, as one of the less than three films I have ever walked out on in my life, I can comfortably and assuredly say that not only was this one of the most unpleasant film experiences of my life, but it was largely because of the dialogue and writing.
Thank you, JJ Abrams, for ruining what should have been a good mother-son bonding experience. I left her alone, while going to the arcade.In other words, Thank you JJ Abrams for destroying a little bit of my childhood with your shit, formulaic drivel striving for a deeper resonance but that found its stride as shit, formulaic melodramatic drivel.
And what I'm really saying: Mr. Abrams, your attempt at the New -- the junky quasi-intellectual sci-fi -- is just that. It's Junky. There is a market out there for the hearts and minds of sixteen-year-old girls. Judging by the general reaction and demographics of the defenders of said piece, you should absolutely stick with it. Absolutely. Positively.
But those smarts? Leave it to those of us who have it. We're a dying breed, we get defensive and a little bit round-the-wagons cold.
It's been awhile, what with the valley of lethargic antipathy that is the post-project doldrums not coming with a road map or really any sort of guidance whatsoever. I ate potato chips for dinner, so there. My fearless readers, you get another in the long line of compendium posts that I seem to be so efficient, nay, resigned, to cobbling.
The notes:
Firstly, I would like somebody, more versed in the voodoo that is contemporary physics theory as it pertains to personal electronic devices in the early 21st century, to explain how the simple shock of walking up three flights of stairs can render, without external aid of any sort, the touch screen of a cell phone to shatter to the point of unusability. Because people, this happened. And it was sort of beautiful.
Secondly, there's a certain joy in the smell of a counter cleaner that it should smell like over-ripened, treacly and sugar-enriched oranges. The lingering scent makes me think my counter should still be sticky.
Thirdly, and tangentially, I had a grand experiment with cocktailing this weekend, which frankly worked like a charm. Going back to the treacle, there's the negroni. That was the base. One part gin, one part Campari, one part sweet vermouth. Needless to say my counter/bar area had the tackiness of a women's locker room after the visiting freshman-boys-chess-club ventured through the wrong locker area.
My addition? Beer. Add one more part beer, let it rip. It livens and separates the flavors, seemingly transforming the cocktail from a fine late night summer drink to a finer, midday at the yacht club affair.
Except your yacht club serves PBR.
Fourthly, and similarly tangential, a rule: the game of Scrabble should absolutely be devoured while drinking said Negronis. Makes the words so much crisper.
Fifthly, and completely unrelated to everything said above, so get over it. I've been reading this critique of Jonathan Franzen's eulogy for the novel, and more importantly, its relevance. Franzen argues the novel is dead, much in the same way that longform journalism is dead. Martha Nichols argues that it isn't largely based on the inherent suspense and gratification delayment the simple necessity of turning a page entails, further saying that the books that will most likely live on tend to be sort that you have to apologize for reading upon inquiry.
I read the mood as more transitional right now. Franzen has a style more inline with American realism, the sort of Pulitzer bait that isn't very far removed from the practice of longform journalism. It's fine, but currently feels old and stale compared to the other forms and stylistic approaches engaged in currently (I'm thinking of the more European experimental styles, the philosophical novel, even the gothics). I still maintain that for art to retain its power, it needs to find the way to say things new, and while the realist tradition, with its power drawn more from the author's ability for observation than framing, ...well, the dusty layers of caked-on mold are starting to show.
Sixthly, finally, breathlessly, I've recently had two friends bemoan photography's place in the art world. Studio shit? Junk. I agree. Slice of life, candid, street? Maybe so. This is seriously a problem that keeps me up at night, so understand I have no way around it. In light, though, I've been messing around with the camera more, and some of these photos, while you may have seen them, I offer only for amusement and...my attempts at the ineffable. Because that's what it's really about.
So after the near-loss of the star character in this psychodrama (namely, me), the inclusion of a ghost and a large preponderance of apparently contraband Russian porn being allowed to sift through, this blog is back up and running, albeit the slightly less kempt, the slightly more visual, and altogether being cobbled together in a place that looks like a warzone.
What happened, you say? A damned film class, I say. The result:
Now, I'm not trying to say it's good. It's a first attempt. Like first time even working with anything motion -- film, video, etc. And the sound design is essentially made for this size of interface -- when played on the big screen I actually blanched a bit at the lack of some sounds making it through, others I wish I could have tweaked a bit more.
My favorite of the feedback so far? "This is definitely the work of Geof Metz." I give major kudos to the author of that one.
Anyway, as this is essentially a reunion episode I'm going to keep it short and fluffy and altogether completely prosaic.
But the best tidbit about this film so far: When uploading it to youtube, it wants to tag it with "Horror Film" and "Mime."
For those of you who read this regularly -- and have reason to keep up with this other than the apparent rockstar SE optimization I did on a pair of posts that have culled traffic from Germany, Russia (oh, have I gotten a lot from Russia), as well as parts elsewhere for what was essentially a very very dull post (one might venture prosaic(?)), well, here goes.
I'm not planning on shunting this one, but I've got a little bit of dialogue exercises I feel like fucking around with, and what better way to do so than by pulling crappy, corporate photos.
Another digest post. Click off now or forever hold your peace.
Friday night, first the Brooklyneer, where, despite the guy in the "I'm trying to sell Sailor Jerry or at least introduce the world to the greater benefits of Don Ho and mayonnaise-laced teriyaki" shirt, the bar seemed okay. Actually, pretty decent, all the way around. But remember, it's the West Village, where people drink for the scenery, not for the "Public House" idea of the public house.
Battleship Potemkin. In a phrase, lovely, dated, and I think it gave me ADD. And I cannot fault friend Daniel for bringing earplugs.
I will get this out of the way: as someone who had only once in his life ever ice skated for the grand total of free, I have to give a rousing endorsement to The Pond in Bryant Park. That is, at 8 a.m.
I have had to twice defend my position of disliking Terry Gross, and I didn't even have last night's episode for an exhibit. C.I.P. In a conversation with Lena Dunham, the director of Tiny Furniture, she could not keep away from the middle brow catnip of "So how much of this story is really you?", stretching it to an infuriating
